Teaching & Training
Teaching Experiences in the Department
The department promotes students’ professional development as teachers through four interlinked teaching experiences.
- The sequence begins with Writing 1: Writing Culture, an innovative course that fosters creativity and experimentation in all phases of the writing process. Students are prepared for this course through Practicum in Teaching Writing, a three-credit course to be taken in the fall of their second year.
- This experience may be complemented by one of the pedagogy seminars attached to the department’s large lecture courses (on Shakespeare or on the novel, for example), which introduces students to the teaching of literature.
- The third level of teaching expertise is represented by co-teaching. Co-teaching provides a collaborative teaching experience of a literature course at the 200-, 300- or 400-level with experienced faculty.
Finally, we offer and facilitate opportunities for teaching a self-designed course. Such opportunities exist at Washington University (at University College and in some of the programs with which we collaborate) and at many of the other colleges in the city of St. Louis.
The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences offers a teaching citation, which enhances students’ teaching knowledge and skills. Gaining the citation requires participation in non-credit workshops in the Teaching Center, completion of varied teaching experiences, submission of faculty and student evaluations of the student’s teaching, and the development a teaching philosophy statement.